In the last three decades, Jewish mysticism has gone from an underground discipline to a mass phenomenon.

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Excerpted and reprinted with permission of the author from “Jewish Mysticism: Seeking Inner Light.” Originally published in Moment Magazine, February 1997.

In 1968, Response, a Jewish student journal, ran an article called “Notes from the Jewish Underground” that boldly likened the effect of then‑popular psychedelic drugs to the experience of kabbalah, the uniquely Jewish brand of mysticism. At the time, kabbalah, even more than the substances to which the article compared it, lived only underground. Universities—even rabbinical seminaries—offered few courses in Jewish mysticism, and Jewish bookstores stocked few titles.

The article in Response was signedby ltzik Lodzer—the pseudonym, the editors noted, “of a Jewish student living in the Boston area.”

That student, it turned out, was Arthur Green, who continues to live in the Boston area—but now far from underground, as a prominent intellectual and theologian, a past president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and a professor of Jewish thought at Brandeis.

Green’s journey from the counterculture to a position of prominence in the Jewish world speaks volumes about the new respectability that kabbalah has attained in the 30 years since he wrote his article. Today all major rabbinical seminaries and many universities offer courses on Jewish mysticism, directors of Jewish adult‑education programs say that classes on kabbalah are the ones that reliably pack in the most people, even secular bookstores stock a trove of kabbalistic literature. Not only are English translations now available of the classic kabbalistic texts, but alongside them are the expository writings of Green, kabbalah scholar and theologian Daniel Matt, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, and Rabbi Philip Berg, whose international network of Kabbalah Learning Centres has made a “pop” version of kabbalah attractive to a broad audience, including such Hollywood celebrities as Roseanne and comedian Sandra Bernhard. Of the 55 titles published by six‑year‑old Jewish Lights Publishing, says publisher‑founder Stuart Matlins, fully 20 deal with Jewish mysticism and spirituality.

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